Naval Ravikant

Background

Naval Ravikant, born November 5, 1974, is an entrepreneur, life, and business guru who did not grow up with his future written down. Instead, he started to delineate it since he was still very young. Ravikant was born in an impoverished background in New Delhi, the capital of India. His story is incredible and inspiring, to say the least. When he was just nine years old, his family moved to New York, hoping to find better living conditions and a brighter future for little Ravikant and his brother. However, his father, who worked as a pharmacist in India, could not continue his profession in America due to the different regulations in both countries, so he had to start over again, now working in a hardware store.

Thanks to his outstanding performance in his early years, he got a place in the prestigious Stuyvesant high school. He has mentioned the importance that this school had in his way of perceiving the world thanks to the mathematical and scientific approach of the school. Therefore, it is not surprising that to continue his career, he managed to enter Dartmouth, where he obtained two different university degrees, one in economics and the other in computer science. With all this knowledge, Ravikant managed to create his first digital business — Epinions. This website ended up being bought by eBay (for more than $600 million) in the early 2000s. From everything he experienced at Epinions, Ravikant started a blog where he answered the questions of his fellow businessmen — “Venture Hacks” became one of those sacred sources of information for the most critical minds in the financial sector. Thanks to this blog, the Indian-born businessman began to have contacts with different investors. These were the first steps of what would become AngelList.

AngelList operates as a kind of connector between investors and many startups. This form of diffusion to new companies is the service for which the company charges, so it has become a millionaire company. Since starting AngelList, Ravikant began what would become a prolific career on Twitter, where he shares his knowledge and multiple tips for entrepreneurs and people who have an interest in the financial world.